Rocket attack…

CHRIS BENNETT has been the happy recipient of a friend’s garden produce.

A FRIEND, whom I shall call Wendy for want of a better name, has a vegetable garden. As Wendy is a former farmer her garden, as you may imagine, is a delight to behold.

It is complete with a scarecrow (although its duties are more that of a scaremonkey) called, I think, Wurzel Gummidge; a good name for a scarecrow, I am sure you will agree.

Among the many herbs and vegetables that seem to thrive in Wendy’s garden, - not, I suspect, that they would dare do otherwise – are a fine example of one of my favourites, rocket.

I noticed that the rocket has taken off this year. I was presented with a large bunch when I visited the house last week, and started nibbling its peppery, lemony leaves in the car on the way home.

Herbs are a thing I have come to rather late in life, one of the reasons being, I suspect, that I had not encountered really fresh herbs until I came to live by the sea eight years ago. Many moons ago, when I lived in a flat in Hillbrow, I used to wander down past the old Landdrost Hotel, to Plintor, probably the best greengrocer I have ever encountered.

Not only were their fruits and vegetables tingling and shining in their freshness, but they were displayed in such a manner that the whole shop had the air of a jeweller’s to it. The aubergines glowed with deeply satisfying, almost midnight hues; fat leeks, clean as babies, snoozed in their beds of tissue. The shop floor was, of course, spotless.

Apples, oranges and strange furry fruits were in rows as straight as the chairs at a grand dinner; herbs were in bunches, looking for all the world like flower arrangements. Some were flower arrangements.

But I digress.

Wendy’s rocket is most certainly to be sniffed at. Like basil, another of my favourites, its scent springs from the leaves when they are lightly rubbed.

It is particularly delicious, in small quantities, mixed with mushrooms in an omelette. The sliced mushrooms should be simmered in a little butter and the rocket shaken into it at the end of the cooking.

I tried to find out a little more about this beautiful greenery, but it seems only to appear in my food books after about 1975. Its botanical name is Eruca vesicaria and it is a member of the cabbage family. We all have our faults.

Not that I have anything against cabbage. I like cabbage, but it has always been the buffoon of the English kitchen.

I was delighted to discover last week that a new book is on the shelves. Compiled by the erudite Jill Norman, the literary executor of Elizabeth David, it is called At Elizabeth David’s Table. It is a fine book and a great tribute to Mrs David’s skills as a writer, and especially as an essayist. It includes some of her pieces composed for The Spectator,

Sunday Times, Vogue and Petits Propos Culinaires.

As with so much of her writing it is the devotion to research, often involving much travel around post-war Europe with a friend (Mrs David never learnt to drive) that lends her work its great charm.

At Elizabeth David’s Table is available now and is, for the right person, a perfect Christmas present.

Passage booked…

CHRIS BENNETT starts gearing up for the Christmas book season.

UNDOUBTEDLY, by now you will have had a chance to visit Ramsgate Stationers in their beautiful new premises in the Southcoast Mall.

I say undoubtedly largely out of bias, or if you prefer, bibliomania.

Once a year we are exhorted by our leading educators, at least I think that is the term, to encourage children to read; although I am probably wrong, I can’t help thinking that is all that happens: we encourage children to read once a year.

The problem, as seems usually to be the case, lays not so much with the children as with the parents: so few people have the time, let alone the inclination, to read a book.

I recently finished a semi-autobiographical novel, the first fiction, if fiction it be, I’ve read in years. It was The Edwardians, by that gifted and extraordinary character, Vita Sackville-West. It was published in Tavistock Square, London, in 1931 by her friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

You may recall that VSW was the wife of the colourful diplomat Harold Nicolson. Their son Nigel is the Nicolson of the publishers Wiedenfeld and Nicolson.

As a child Sackville-West had grown up in another monumental house, Knole, an upbringing which more than qualified her to write this extraordinary book. Its subject is the manners and customs of the English aristocracy in the reign of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, from about 1902 until 1910, the Edwardian period of a century ago.

What drew me to the book was that in the first place it has been on my shelf for years and in the second place a dip into it revealed Vita’s exquisite use of English.

Not only is it beautiful to read and think about, but, of course, it emphasises her ability to marshal her thoughts; what we used to call lucidity and fluency.

Before I leave the subject of reading, I came across a BBC blog last week by the writer/broadcaster Sue Lawler. At least I think it was she; in the blog she wrote:

“I live with the tensions between the world out there I want to see, and even contemplate, and the inner world to which the book gives me access. It is the inner rewards of reading a book in a private and concentrated way that lead you into realms of your own imagination and thought that no other process offers. Something happens between the words and the brain that is unique to the moment and to your own sensibilities.”

I am increasingly of the belief that something similar will be said of the electronic reader before too long.

My friend Larry Routledge’s talk on his dramatic and rather alarming experiences in the Southern Ocean, given in Palm Beach last week, was well attended. It is a rare thing to listen to someone whose experiences are so far removed for the ordinary that they take on a life of their own.

The captain of the vessel used in most of the blocking activities aimed at the Japanese whalers, the Ady Gil, was Pete Bethune. The day of Larry’s talk there arrived in the post Bethune’s account of the episode Whale Warriors.

As whales are such an integral part of our lives on the South Coast I think the book would make a good Christmas present. A Hodder Moa book, it is published in New Zealand by Hachette of Auckland, and should soon be available at Ramsgate Stationers in the Southcoast Mall.

Feathered whales…

CHRIS BENNETT toys with birds of a feather.

WHEN I glanced from my seat at the bar in the local one day last week, I thought for a moment that a flock of splendid tropical rain forest birds had settled in the dining room.

It hadn’t, of course: it was the Red Hat Society gracing, in many ways, the dining room of the High Rock Pub (and Grill).

A pair (a brace, perhaps?) of these elegant fowls came into the bar and I asked them the obvious question.

That got me trawling the net back at my cottage. I was rather delighted by what I found.

It appears that the Red Hat Society, of which there are now something like 50 thousand members in 26 countries, meet regularly (please note that I did not write on a regular basis; it would have killed the prose, such as it is) in a place of their choosing.

What I found particularly engaging is that members of the society, who wear a red hat and a purple outfit to their lunches, gather for the simple pleasure of enjoying each other’s company. In this world of ours something so simple is at once engaging and charming.

The society was founded in the United States in 1998 by one Sue Ellen Cooper. Membership is restricted to women over 50, although recently a Pink Hat Society has emerged for those of slightly more tender years.

The society has a slight but interesting connection to South Africa.

Inspiration was drawn by Cooper from Jenny Joseph’s poem, Warning, the opening lines of which read:

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me”.

Jenny Joseph is an English poet. She was born in Birmingham, and studied English literature at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, before becoming a journalist. She worked for the Bedfordshire Times, the Oxford Mail and Drum Publications in Johannesburg.

Of course the members don’t sport just any old red hat. These confections are meant to delight, and to send a frisson through the chosen setting. The gorgeously decorated millinery displayed with such élan at the High Rock last week brought a joyous note of summer. Feathers fluttered and bobbed in the hats as their wearers chatted and chaffed their lunchtime away.

By the way, those readers with a bent for arithmetic will have realised that the collective membership of the world’s Red Hat Societies represents two and a half million years. Just thought I’d mention it.

While I am on the subject of the pub, the old beer garden, which was more like a back yard, has been transformed with the replacement of ugly concrete slotted fencing by a charming wooden fence and new beer garden furniture. To me it seemed a good effort on the part of the management and their stalwart, Ricardo.

The High Rock will be the venue for a presentation next Monday (29^th) by my friend Larry Routledge.

Larry was a member of the intrepid team that took on the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean last summer, which was seen worldwide on satellite television. He is not only a good engineer, but he is an experienced sailor and an excellent photographer.

Before the crew left for the Antarctic Larry was involved in the preparation in New Zealand of the extraordinary catamaran, the Adi Gil. It was eventually rammed by a whaler from the Land of the Rising Sun, and it was lost with much of Larry’s equipment. He and the other crew members were shaken but not stirred.

The presentation, at 6pm at the High Rock in Palm Beach, will be illustrated but Larry’s fine photography; an event worth attending.

The eyes have it…

CHRIS BENNETT finds that having your eyes done is not as bad as having your teeth done. Well, not quite.

OPTOMETRISTS are often very interesting people. They see a lot. On the face of it that may not seem very remarkable, but it is.

I visit my optometrist, with whom I have been a patient (if that is the word), for eight years, about once in two years. This time I had left it a little late, but then visiting the optometrist is about two rungs down the nervous scale from visiting the dentist.

Her rooms, surgery or maybe chambers, a word dripping with ominous implications, are bright and cheerful, and housed inside the warmth and comfort of the Shelly Centre. The inner room is also bright. In one corner sits the chair, brooding, like a spider waiting to pounce. Sundry large pieces of what appear to be modern interpretations of medieval equipment also lurk in the shadows.

Of course all this is in my head, but unfortunately so is everything else so that knowledge doesn’t help a bit.

The processes which are to determine the condition of my ageing eyes are thorough and delicately laced with a hint of menace.

Again, it’s in my head. I am fortunate in having good eyesight, and even more so in having someone to confirm that.

A number of other devices are used to test the resilience or otherwise of the windows to my soul. I see them as inventions of the Inquisition, but again I am wrong; aren’t I?

There is a quaint contraption that requires the victim to balance his chin on a sort of cradle; after a few reassuring words a short jet of air hits the eyeball with unnerving accuracy. And, of course, there are two eyes; so twice the unnerving.

And then there is the pièce de résistance. This contrivance of modern technology tells the optometrist a great deal. It, I think, photographs the eye; with a flash, in a flash. It is a bit like watching one those experiments men used to carry out on Christmas Island, an unfortunately named atoll in the Pacific.

I was able to describe the kaleidoscope of colours that I saw after this event (not Christmas Island) which told my friend Nataschka even more than she already knew of my eyes and their ways.

She pointed out that stress can affect the eyesight. Of that I have no doubt.

After all my misplaced nervousness I came away with a feeling of well-being, that all is as well with my precious sight as may be expected at this stage of my life.

One of the things I enjoy discussing with Nataschka is my colour blindness. She is not even remotely troubled by it because she understands the condition so thoroughly. The only other person with whom I can discuss this beautiful world with is my brother, Richard. We have identical colour vision.

And of course, when we are together the rest of the world is colour blind.

I was rather pleased, while watching a gorgeous gaggle of green pigeons, clowning around and falling about like parrots in my neighbour’s fig tree (their Afrikaans name is papagaaiduif), to see in Roberts Birds that the green pigeons are often seen as yellow or gold. I am glad to say that they look splendidly golden to me.

As I am so often waffling on about the importance of reading, I should add to it that the importance of having your eyes checked regularly cannot be over emphasised.

Paradise found…

CHRIS BENNETT was recently a guest at the Brenthurst Library, one of this country’s most outstanding collections.

I AM indebted to Mr Leo Preston of Uvongo for kindly sending me a photo copy of a short story by one of my favourite writers, the master of the short story, Somerset Maugham. The story is The Book-Bag, which I shall read on a wet afternoon. I seem to be still in the middle of a beautiful, tranquil sea of books.

Last week I found myself in what is possibly the closest to heaven I may get. I took two friends, both serious book collectors, to the Brenthurst Library, a striking building erected 25 years ago in the grounds of Brenthurst, a 45 hectare private estate in the centre of Parktown in Johannesburg.

The library houses an outstanding collection of books, paintings, drawings and correspondence relevant to the early development of this country, probably the most important such collection in private hands anywhere.

The atmosphere in the library is soft and relaxing, the lighting designed to be not too harsh, for books are sensitive to light, and the object of this immense exercise, begun around 1920 by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer was the preservation for future generations of the life of South Africa.

Often in this column I have said that we have only language, by which I mean that mankind has only his language by which he may communicate with others, especially those close to him.

The astonishing Brenthurst collection includes 28 000 books, which are essentially Africana; the largest collection in the world of the paintings of Thomas Baines; Baines’s notebooks; Livingstone’s complete correspondence and the original of all the publications relating to South African ornithology: that is the tip of the iceberg.

These precious papers are kept in beautifully bound boxes, made for the purpose in the library’s bindery and stored in the document room, which is kept cooler, drier and darker than the rest of the library.

The third in the Brenthurst series of books, the library’s chefs-d’œuvres, in which unpublished material from the library is made available in fine bindings limited to 1000 books, is now on sale. It draws on the remarkable works of the French explorer and ornithologist, Francois le Vaillant (1753-1824), which are housed in the safe keeping of the Brenthurst Library.

One of my friends, a physicist and botanist, was speechless when he was allowed to examine a work by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish scientist whose life was devoted to the naming of plants and animals in an ordered fashion, a system which is unlikely ever to change.

The bindery I found especially interesting. The resident binder, Alan Jeffrey, explained the workings of the bindery and the nature of his current undertaking: a box for the storage of rare documents. Not unlike the hundreds and hundreds of similar boxes in the document room, it is, as you may imagine, craftsmanship of the highest order. This particular piece, which cost several thousand rands, was destined for Hong Kong.

The bindery is primarily there to keep all the books and papers safe and sound and to bind new acquisitions. The pictures are tended by specialists in the appropriate field of art.

The morning was spent under the careful guidance of the librarian, Fylyppa Meyer, whose knowledge and charm encapsulate the objectives of the Brenthurst Library.

This enchanting day drew to a close with lunch at Moyo at the Zoo Lake, an unusual restaurant which specialises in food from across the African continent, food most appropriate for this occasion. The wine was Laborie.

Pushing the envelope…

CHRIS BENNETT took advantage of a recent trip to Pretoria to enrich his computer profile.

I WAS in the Shelly Centre a week or so ago and I saw a woman with a bird on her shoulder. Some people have chips, some people have birds.

As I walked behind her I thought of the many reasons why this good woman was wearing a piece of bolt-on ornithological fashion wear.

Obviously she liked the thing; furthermore, she must have liked it quite a lot as the two of them were deep in conversation.

I tried to lock in to the gist of the conversation, which seemed to be conducted in flawless Afrikaans. I didn’t get very far, which is probably a good thing because I am not a happy eavesdropper.

At this point the bird decided that it was a happy eavesdropper and proved the point by dropping a colourful assortment of eaves down the good woman’s back. It quite complemented her purple coat.

When we reached an intersection in the mall my new found companions, happy in their cloud of unknowing, went on their way, leaving me to wonder and surmise.

Quite shortly after this I realised what it was that the lady was actually wearing. It was an external hard drive. I knew this because I had bought one on a recent visit to Pretoria.

I consider myself to be reasonably computer literate. Mine has even taught me to type properly, although I still hanker after the good old days of the newsroom when all my colleagues and I typed in the time- honoured search and thump, three- or four-finger method, which was considered way above the level of the juniors and their search and peck two-fingered endeavours.

Unpacking the new toy, which has a memory large enough to store the entire collective experiences of mankind since about the time of the woolly mammoth, was, as it always is these days, a challenge in itself.

Having read all the little books that came with it, several of which almost made sense; having struggled a little to remove the plastic wrap from the thing’s velvet pyjamas (for travelling, of course), I was finally confronted with awesome reality itself; it was looking at me from the security and comfort of its little plastic cot.

I set about removing it. The sumptuous box in which all this paraphernalia arrived on my desk bore the legend Racing Inspired Design, complete with a chequered flag on the front of said box.

The extra-durable dampening outer shell, along with the racing inspired design, had left me full of admiration for its maker’s ingenuity. What did not leave me in admiration of their ingenuity was the fact that the thing was so beautifully fitted into its plastic cot that it could not, quite clearly, be removed.

Well that should save on wear and tear.

Having pondered such excesses as a kitchen knife, at which my very being flinched like a startled mustang, I finally turned the plastic container over and gave it a gentle thump. The device landed on my lap; it looked rather smug.

I eventually realised that this thing had become my computer’s clone, and it is an awful lot easier to cart around than the laptop. Fiendishly clever, that’s what these oriental chaps are.